Schools can't dispense with such a fundamental out of a desire for good test scores.

New York has long been a state of immigrants, and its government and schools have for many years recognized both the value of diversity and the need to accommodate it. But an idea under consideration by the Board of Regents to substitute proficiency tests in English for exams in Spanish appears fraught with potential problems.

This is not about some jingoistic "English only" agenda. Helping New York's foreign-speaking residents and guests to understand things like signs and government documents is a fair and sensible thing to do. At the same time, it would be unfair and unwise to allow a growing obsession with testing to overshadow the goal of actually educating students in what they need to know in order to engage fully in American civic and economic life. One of the most important keys to that is the English language.

The state is considering asking the federal government for a waiver that would allow it to offer students an alternate exam in a foreign language rather than the English Language Arts test, which is given to children in grades 3 to 8. The tests would be aimed at students who are newly arrived from other countries and who don't speak, read or write much if any English. The change would begin with a Spanish Language Arts Exam.

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There are certainly some legitimate arguments for testing students in their native tongue if they know little English — depending, that is, on the goal. If you want to test math skills, for example, a test in a language students clearly understand makes sense, so that a language gap doesn't lead them to answers they would otherwise know are wrong.

Similarly, if the goal is to test cognitive skills separately from language comprehension, a test in a language a child can understand makes more sense, too.

The concern, however, is that this idea is driven by a desire to simply boost schools' overall test scores by giving children a pass on a test that the schools know they won't do well in. Perhaps worse, the state would be substituting the English exam with one in a different language and using it for all the same purposes, when in fact its most fundamental measure — English proficiency — would be missing.

It is essential that children attending schools in America master the English language. Otherwise, they will be at a disadvantage in school and in life. English is the common language of this nation and the language of its commerce. To not be proficient in it means limited opportunities for higher education and careers. Substituting foreign language proficiency test for English proficiency tests threatens to mask a failure by schools to meet a critical obligation, and a failure by students to learn a critical skill — all for the sake of making scores look good. We have enough of a debate about the perils of teaching to the test. We should not be testing to the test result.

Surely there are ways to not penalize schools that have high numbers of immigrant students, without penalizing the children who go there to learn.